With an eye-opening trip to Kenya behind him as part of the Plant The Planet Games, Kilkenny’s Paul Murphy was back in studio over the weekend to catch up with The Saturday Show’s Edward Hayden.
Eventually, the conversation would turn to sport and to Murphy’s plans for the season ahead.
“I got a call the other night (about the Kilkenny football championships launch) and I said I’ll be up there. I hung up the phone and Aideen turned to me and said ‘so I suppose you’re playing football this year then'”, Murphy told The Saturday Show.
“At the moment, I’m going to play football for Kilkenny again this year. Danesfort are back senior now (in hurling) so we’ll give that a good crack now. I suppose we learned from the split season that, you know, often times this time of the year teams are full into training. Some teams are back in training but, because you really won’t puck a ball in anger until August, we’re slowly getting up and going with Danesfort.”
“So the plan is very much have a go at the football again, and then we’ll see how Danesfort go.”
Under Christy Walsh, Kilkenny lifted the new-look All-Ireland junior football title in July last year. The competition’s structure has changed to a four-team tournament run across one weekend with semi-finals in Abbottstown on a Friday followed by the All-Ireland final in Croke Park two days later. Kilkenny will contest the competition again this year alongside beaten finalists New York and the top two sides from the British junior championship.
As far as football at Danesfort goes, following Monday night’s draw, Danesfort will being their football league campaign against Erin’s Own on the weekend of 5 February with O’Loughlin Gaels, Thomastown and Tullogher Rosbercon making up the rest of the senior group A.
